Page 42 of The Starving Saints

She’s not in armor. She’s not even armed. But her hands are covered in blood, and for just a moment, Treila is a girl again, staring at her father’s headless corpse, staring at Ser Voyne’s impassive face, splattered crimson.

She lets go of Phosyne. She barely hears her flee.

Ser Voyne crosses the dusty yard to her in long, rolling steps, proof of the muscles that lie below her arming jacket, her breeches. Her eyes are fixed on Treila, and Treila thinks, distantly, that she should be running too.

She doesn’t move, not even when Ser Voyne stops right in front of her.

“Why are you on your knees, my lady?” Ser Voyne asks. Her voiceis low and rough, as if she’s been screaming. But her expression is kind, entreating, wholly focused on her.

Treila can’t breathe.

“Come,” Ser Voyne says, and places one gentle hand beneath her elbow, guides her to her feet.

This is an opportunity, Treila thinks, but the thought is distant. She should be triumphant. Here is Ser Voyne, soft and caring. But where is the guilt? The confusion, even? Just confusion would be enough, would makesense, where this kindness does not. This is not how their second meeting was supposed to go. Ser Voyne was supposed to find her again, and approach cautiously, ask her name, ask if it is really, truly her. And Treila would have playacted fear, flinching away from any touch, begging for mercy.

Mercy, Ser—mercy, for the price my father has already paid for his treason.

But everything is different now, and Treila can’t get the words out, can’t even pull away as Ser Voyne steers her toward the garden where they sat together not three days ago. All because Ser Voyne looks at her with adoration, not disbelief.

Her heart is breaking, her whole world close to shattering into a thousand pieces she will never be able to put back together. This doesn’t change anything, itcan’tchange anything; her father is still dead, her family still destroyed, and she still has no future beyond catching rats in dying castles. But if Ser Voyne has already suffered for it—if Ser Voyne tells her that she has thought of Treila every day, even though Treila was just a girl, just collateral damage, then Treila doesn’t know whosheis anymore.

Because Treila was betrayed by Ser Voyne, and hates Ser Voyne. And right now, she doesn’t feel hate. She feels—raw. Out of control. Desperate and needy and longing.

She lets herself be seated on the same bench. Stares as Ser Voyne kneels at her feet.

All around them, impossibly green shoots push up from the earth. Young plants, plants that should have sprouted months ago, were eaten weeks ago. But here they are, incontrovertible. Food, freshfood, and Treila should not be so delighted, because she needs to get out,not stay. Everybody must get out, not stay. Food here is worthless if they can’t break through the siege.

And yet all of her reason feels as distant as her rage. She’s too giddy. She stares back at Ser Voyne, and can’t stop herself from asking, desperately, “Where has your doubt gone?”

“Far away,” Ser Voyne says with a small, sheepish smile. “I understand now how foolish it was, to be so surprised by your presence. To mistrust it so. Of course you’re here, because... because I have need of you.”

Treila can’t stop the shocked sound that ekes out of her throat.

Focus.She never thought she would have Ser Voyne so close, with all her armor shed. Treila has a knife at her belt, a knife that would fit so perfectly in the notch between her clavicle and her ribs, right into her lungs, and it would be sosweetto hear her gasping, breath bubbling as she thrashed on the ground.

Wouldn’t it?

And wouldn’t it be even better with Ser Voyne hanging on her every word, kneeling at her feet like this? Yearning for her touch?

Because sheisyearning. Treila can see that. Shaking, she reaches out, fits her palm to Ser Voyne’s cheek. The older woman leans into it. Her eyes close in decadent pain.

“My lady,” Ser Voyne breathes.

Treila’s lower lip trembles. Her free hand hovers above the hilt of her knife, then falls.

She can’t do it. This devotion is too much. It makes her feel powerful in a way that feigning fear never would have.

And even if it doesn’t hurt Ser Voyne quite so much, Treila can still seize her original goal. Ser Voyne does not feel guilty, no, but sheadores, and that might be stronger than shame. Treila can break her faith with it. Dismantle every belief that led to Ser Voyne so cleanly severing her father’s head from his body.

“Have you ever questioned your orders? Ever hesitated to fulfill them?” she asks.

“Not yours,” Ser Voyne replies.

Treila frowns, tries to think—what orders? Girlish orders, for refreshment, for lessons, for sparring in the yard. Those orders? Theymeant the world to her, but she’d been fourteen, spoiled, desirous for the first time in her short life. That Ser Voyne marked them is... she can’t think of the word. She can only shudder.

“And King Cardimir’s?” she presses.

And she is treated to the most beautiful sight she’s ever seen: Ser Voyne’s lip curling in contempt, in barely restrainedhatred.

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